Touching Up Our Roots

The 80's

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MECCA
From The GA Voice (October & November Editions)
by Dave Hayward, Coordinator, Touching Up Our Roots, Inc.: Georgia's LGBTQ Story Project


Here's a "Greatest Hits" of our Georgia LGBTQ long march to freedom.
Feeling like one of the survivors of a slasher flick (sorry, folks), nevertheless I'm eager to spill the stories.

THE 80S

It was a dark new dawn in November 1980 when Ronald Reagan lambasted Jimmy Carter in a landslide, and our Democratic victory party became a wake. Slinking home we chirped "See you in the camps!" Seven months later our black humor became reality when AIDS - first called Gay Related Immune Deficiency or GRID - was identified. Suddenly there were serious calls for quarantining, and even branding, all g**s and le****ns as a public health menace.

1982 - the end of that year designer Graham Bruton helped form AID Atlanta, which hosted a slideshow at Colony Square depicting the ravages of Kaposi's sarcoma. "Everything has to change" I realized, and indeed safe s*x (say what?) and condoms became the new normal for gay men.

Dr. Jesse Peel and others founded several AIDS organizations, and the buddy program to help people living with AIDS - not AIDS victims - began at AID Atlanta.

Even those who cared were terrorized, and in 1983 we hosted a dinner party for our brothers with AIDS. Should we throw out the plates after the party, we wondered. Neither the state of Georgia nor Ronald Reagan were much help. Local activists and doctors like Rick Hudson and Bernie Short and John Kopchak lobbied the Georgia General Assembly to keep draconian penalties from passing, and Gil Robison became the first openly gay and AIDS lobbyist at the Gold Dome.

1986 - In February we made a human chain around the First Baptist Church at 5th and Peachtree to decry Reverend Charles Stanley declaring AIDS "God's judgment against sinners." Groups like PFLAG lead by Judy Colbs and others became key allies, and ironically AIDS began bringing the LGBT community and the straight community closer, as well as gay men and le***an women.

In October we packed the Atlanta City Council to defeat the repeal of our gay rights ordinance, while the Citizens for Public Awareness railed "Do you want Atlanta turned into another San Francisco?" But you are Blanche, you are.

1987 - In 1986 the Supreme Court upheld Atlantan Michael Hardwick's conviction for so**my - arrested in his own bedroom, no less - and thus upheld all so**my statutes in states that still had them. Such an insult became the catalyst for the second National March on Washington for Le***an and Gay Rights in October 1987.

Atlantans Ray Kluka, director of the Atlanta Gay and Le***an Center, and Maria Helena Dolan were among hundreds arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court in a mass die-in.

At the March the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt (headquartered in Atlanta since 2001 under CEO Julie Rhoad) made its national debut, and visitors grieved like people from another culture hugging and sobbing above the panels. Finally we had an outlet for our agony, and those we loved are enshrined in the world's largest folk art project.

1986 - Spurred by the Supreme Court Hardwick fiasco, Winston Johnson comes out to his dear friend Coretta Scott King and enlists her into actively advocating for LGBT rights, as does her longtime assistant Lynn Cothren. Before she knows it, Ms. King is the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in New York, and guest of honor at the first Atlanta HRC dinner in 1987.

1988 - Playwright and actress Rebecca Ranson who lead SAME, the Southeastern Arts and Media Education foundation, premieres "Higher Ground" featuring a cast of actors living with HIV at the World Congress Center, in tandem with a display of the Quilt. Ranson also wrote the first play about AIDS, "Warren" about her friend Warren Johnson, which opened at Seven Stages Theatre in 1984.

In March 1988 Ranson and Chris Cash founded Southern Voice, the precursor to Georgia Voice.

1988 - Out of the Democratic National Convention held here, the DNC LGBT caucus steamrolls an Atlanta ACT UP FIGHT AIDS chapter. We picket Circle K gas station for refusing to stock SPIN Magazine with condoms on the cover, and also "die in" at the Governor's mansion.

Richard Rhodes and Melinda Daniels are the first gay man and le***an woman to be delegates - from Georgia - to the Convention, and Rhodes also is a delegate to the 1992 DNC. For good measure, he and Gil Robison are the first openly gay men to run for office here in 1988 for the Georgia House of Representatives.

Neither win, but now we have an LGBT caucus of five in the Georgia House of Representatives.

1989 - When activist icon Ray Kluka passes from complications of AIDS, a park honors him at Monroe Drive and Greenwood Avenue. Along with the John Howell Park on Virginia Avenue, Ray and John are the only two gay men who have public spaces named for them in Georgia.

As Rebecca Ranson says, everyone does everything they can to help, and our loved ones keep dying. They live in us and we celebrate them.